We are witnessing a resurgence of masculinity as a saving promise for the left. In certain sectors of the current political and media context, a masculine identity framework is gaining strength that seems capable of taking the helm and connecting with the working classes, especially with young voters whose main ideological references are characters from the ultra milieu. It is about the common man, spontaneous, bold, who goes straight to the point and does not yield to the rules of the party system. A man who in his simplicity or lack of pretension becomes amiable without losing the firmness and authority that are by default associated with his gender.
Gabriel Rufián is a clear example. The ERC spokesperson in Congress, who recently confirmed his offer to lead a united left-wing candidacy, has built a personal discourse around provocation, shock tactics, firm denunciation, and a mixture of common sense and swagger that has proven effective in getting messages across through the social media ecosystem. Rufián presents himself as a normal guy who understands the problems of those who listen to him and, at the same time, as a star, a fucking boss, a brave political actor whose rhetoric fits the imagination of young people.
The profiling of the common man becomes more visible when compared to another figure that emerges in contrast: that of the woman assimilated to the institution, far from the street and with too much academic training, that is, suspected of elitism. We saw these two profiles clashing in the internal struggle at Más Madrid between Mónica García and Emilio Delgado a few weeks ago. The media highlighted the biographical differences between the two: García is the daughter of psychiatrists; Delgado, the son of a bricklayer and unionist father and a housewife mother. She studied medicine and surgery, he has two higher vocational training degrees. He represents the periphery, she represents the government.
When the value of women in all professional fields, their leadership capacity, and their better academic performance are already unquestionable, now this same education for which so much was fought seems like a disadvantage. What for centuries was a pretext to keep women away from public life has now been reversed to continue pursuing the same logic.
An uncomfortable truth emerges: how many women can afford to be common in leadership positions? The common woman does not stand out, she is a non-entity. She has to sell herself a bit more, be a messianic activist like Ada Colau, a lawyer of communist lineage like Yolanda Díaz, or a brilliant orator who rejected a stay at Harvard to dedicate herself fully to Podem like Irene Montero.
An automatism, often unconscious, persists in our imagination, believing that a woman is valuable when she doubles her essence and frees herself from the weight of femininity through work and knowledge. Man, on the other hand, is valuable even in his raw state, for himself.
Behind the bait of gender, two different theses are woven for the left. Mónica García is not just a woman in politics, but a minister who, despite the wear and tear of a resounding doctors' strike, has promoted a battery of important measures to defend public healthcare. Gabriel Rufián and Emilio Delgado are not just men in politics, but politicians who have managed to get their message across to a sector of the population that feels helpless by the institutions and that can turn towards the far-right if they do not find representation that speaks to them directly.
The paths of the left can advance in one direction or another, or travel through both, uniting forces, but any path will be false if it is built on opportunism with a male chauvinist aftertaste. It is important not to give in to discourses that question female leadership; nor to those that create a climate of suspicion, almost of challenge, towards men in left-wing spaces.
Over politics looms the ghost of a promise to return to common sense, to the natural order of things. It threatens to divert us from the real conversation of the left, which is not about thinking who we are, but what we can propose to citizens so that their social rights are strengthened. Ghosts are banished with spells. That is to say, words that transform reality, that become something concrete. Words like housing or like rootedness, like economic stability, sense of future or collective dignity.
